Borland Introduces New Release of Together Edition for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to Facilitate Successful Adoption of Microsoft .NET Technologies

Business Wire, May 24, 2004

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Microsoft TechED 2004

SAN DIEGO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2004

Borland(R) Survey Shows Strong Uptake of Microsoft .NET

and Offers Insight to Those Planning, Developing and

Investigating Microsoft .NET Technologies

Borland Software (Nasdaq:BORL) today announced the second release of Borland(R) Together(R) Edition for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, a complete design and modeling tool for developers. This new release offers additional support for the extensive Microsoft developer community and provides developers and architects with an easier and more cost effective way to collaborate, model and create software so that it better aligns with business requirements.

Industry analysts expect adoption of Microsoft .NET technologies to become more mainstream by 2005, especially as companies employ the Microsoft .NET Framework and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) to develop Web services. The advanced topologies of SOAs and the distributed nature of both systems and companies themselves introduce a new level of complexity and risk into the development environment. Application modeling stands out as a way to manage these risks.

The importance of modeling is supported by a recent Borland survey on the business and technology concerns surrounding adoption of .NET technologies. The survey, conducted in March to approximately 145 application developers, architects and IT managers, found that respondents' number one concern was the ability to manage and control the development process of .NET Framework-based applications.

Survey results also highlighted development concerns around the ability of .NET to integrate with existing IT investments, the cost and time to retrain staff on .NET technologies, and issues around a maturing technology. For companies with a legacy and investment in 32-bit Windows, COM, DCOM, ActiveX and the family of pre-.NET languages, re-use and integration of pre-Microsoft .NET languages is essential. Borland Together for Visual Studio .NET offers a modeling and design tool that is both familiar, yet can be used to build .NET applications that generate and consume Web services.

"Many forward-looking companies are already on-board with Microsoft .NET for the competitive edge it offers, but they face an increasingly complex application development environment," said Raaj Shinde, vice president and general manager for the Borland Together Business Unit. "This is why enterprises, as well as small and medium businesses, are looking to industry leaders like Borland to help them reduce these development risks. Modeling is playing a key role. Together Edition for Visual Studio was the first advanced modeling environment to exist for .NET technologies, and we're now building on its success to bring more affordable modeling to the masses."

As Microsoft .NET spreads across the enterprise, companies are finding modeling an important step in the application lifecycle. Respondents to the Borland survey say that modeling can help them better manage and control the application development process, as well as:

-- Reduce the learning curve for developing applications in a

complex environment

-- Improve developers' productivity and collaboration across the

enterprise

-- Decrease application deployment time

-- Avoid the need to rework code as business requirements evolve

"Microsoft is pleased that Borland is integrating its Together solution with Visual Studio .NET and that Borland continues to work with Microsoft to advance the modeling capabilities of Borland Together Edition," said John Montgomery, director in the .NET Developer Product Management Group at Microsoft Corp. "As .NET technologies continue to gain traction in the enterprise, Borland is providing our mutual customers with an important step in managing the lifecycle of an application."

What's New in Borland Together Edition for Visual Studio .NET?

Borland Together Edition for Visual Studio .NET is specifically aimed at application architects and developers, but because it offers a "big picture" view of applications, it can benefit everyone involved in software development. This big picture view is advantageous to the whole development team, from the CIO to the developer, as it draws a deeper connection between business needs and the resulting software.

It provides insight into how the company's system architecture maps to the various phases of application development, which becomes increasingly important as companies deploy more complex SOAs for web services. Some of the new features in Borland Together Edition for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, available immediately, include:

-- Borland LiveSource(TM): Enhanced Microsoft Visual C# and

Visual Basic .NET reverse engineering capabilities provide

Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagram views of

existing source code and even the ability to generate sequence

diagrams. This helps developers understand existing code, how

objects interact with each other, and ensure any changes to

the source code are automatically reflected back into the